The tendency to deconstruct business functions into ever finer units of specialization – what I call business reductionism – threatens the kind of coordinated action required to execute on a good business strategy and must be resisted. The marketing in particular seems to have become susceptible to this sort of reductionism, brought on by the introduction of new marketing technologies , and hope for reconstitution rests on getting back to first principles.

I have been learning a lot about digital advertising and mobile as my interest in music has expanded into video and media more generally. Along the way, I’ve been struck by the resemblance the evolving digital advertising space bears to the early days of electronic trading on Wall Street (naturally, I’m also not the first to make this connection).

I thought I would try unpacking the analogy a bit here to see how well it holds up and whether there are any lessons that could be learned from the equities markets. (This thought exercise takes up some space so for those so inclined, I’ve made it easy to skip to just the predictions and/or the lessons.) For an interesting read on the advent of electronic trading, I highly recommend Michael Lewis’s Flash Boys – very entertaining, even for someone like myself who lived it first hand.